The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Jennifer Wannen’s  image September Reds received the Juror’s Award in the town & country exhibition juried by Michael Kirchoff.  Jennifer’s exhibition Invocations was featured from May 1 to May 31, 2025 and is discussed in our GalleryTalk with Jennifer.

Artist Statement

Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky reflected, “Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.” As an artist, I gravitate toward subjects that dance on the edge of two worlds—one of ordinary physical reality and one of nonordinary mystical presence. Whether framing a nature scene or setting up a narrative self-portrait, I’m attempting to capture a current of mystery I perceive in that moment. With alternative lenses and composite editing, I’m generally taking an image further from empirical presentation and more into an imaginative space, conjuring multiple layers and realities at play.

My photography practice grew out of spiritual retreat practice, and that retreat mindset has come full circle, infusing itself into my creative focus. My images invite the viewer into an intimate ‘time out of time’ world, ideally making space for their own experience of the sacred in their lives.

Most of the images in “Invocations” came out of a time of close, compounded losses, when grief became a phantom margin to the everyday story. These years opened the aperture to that “secret soul”—both the enchantment and shadows found therein. “Invocations” bears witness to that liminal vision.

Jennifer Wannen
April, 2025

Bio

Jennifer Wannen is a photographer, writer, and interfaith spiritual director in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In her image making, she explores themes of imagination, animism, and mysticism.

Her work has appeared in the PhotoPlace Exhibition Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont, the Southeast Center For Photography in Greenville, South Carolina, A Smith Gallery in Johnson City, Texas, and the Chateau de LaLande in Crozon-sur-Vauvre in France for the Photos de Femmes 2020 seeingWOMEN exhibitions.

website: SoulChapters.com
instagram: @jennifer.wannen

link to online exhibition